La condicionalidad medioambiental de la política de cooperación al desarrollo de la Unión Europea en el contexto del cambio climático

Abstract

The European Union has for years been the largest funder of development cooperation to the most disadvantaged countries. The issue of the conditionality of this aid has been circumscribed to respect for human rights. However, with the impulse from international public opinion to a duty of international protection of the environment, and more recently, with the growing concern about the consequences of natural disasters and climate change, a need has arisen for a global commitment reflected in the UN 2030 Agenda and the 2015 Paris Agreement that the EU has fully assumed. In this context, the regulatory power of the EU has the capacity to expand through its development cooperation policy and thus may condition the policies of the beneficiary countries towards an effective commitment to the environment and climate change. Nevertheless, more than an explicit conditionality, we must speak of an implicit and indirect conditionality since all EU development cooperation is subject to the environmental and climate change principles through mainstreaming, a powerful mechanism. On the other hand, we cannot forget the powerful weapon that constitutes the European commercial power through its preferential systems established for developing countries, which is probably a more efficient and effective instrument. However, the pending challenge in this transforming capacity of European cooperation in this field is environmental governance, which is hampered by the lack of responsible international consultation and the commercial short-termism of many international actors.